Why Thanksgiving & fish heads go together

This week is Thanksgiving, and it is my favorite holiday. Thanksgiving is not about religion or patriotism or buying candy or guilt; it is a celebration that combines eating well with enjoying our friends and family while expressing gratitude to and for the people who made us who we are.

And so, I want to thank a whole bunch of people who shaped my life in unforeseen ways, the kind folks who overlooked my otherness by perceiving me through their ears rather than through their eyes, the ones who accepted me as a sorta Chinese person, someone who was no longer one of Them, but rather one of Us. 

Chinese people have this strange reputation for being aloof and inscrutable, and yet only those who never counted Chinese among their friends would ever think of saying that. They are, in fact, some of the warmest and most loving people in the world. And they feed you. Oh my, how they feed you.

These friends not only taught me how to relish great foods from all over China, but more importantly they welcomed me into their kitchens and their lives. I'm talking in particular about the good people of Taiwan, and even more specifically about the Mainlanders who came to call that island home after the mass exodus with Chiang Kai-shek in 1949. 

My memories of these friends seem to inevitably swirl around food. Maybe it's because aromas are so evocative and can summon up old memories like nothing else. While cold winds blow outside this afternoon, a bubbling sandpot on the stove reminds me of how winter in Taipei used to be my idea of heaven, for it meant that I could hunker down to great, warming meals after work and lose myself in simple but sensual pleasures. 

When left to our own means, my husband and I invariably gravitated to simpler places that specialized in homestyle dishes, honest foods that spoke of lands on the other side of the Taiwan Strait that were left behind when these cooks fled, sometimes very much alone and always away from the sound of gunfire.

Taipei in the late Seventies and early Eighties was filled with many such people, mostly middle-aged men and women who often had married local Taiwanese. The gentleman who taught me how to paint in the Chinese style was just such a person.

Shanghai refugees

He started out life as an orphan after someone or other had bombed his village in rural Henan. Just a little boy when he climbed out of mounds of rubble and dead bodies, he followed a stream of refugees to a city, where he found work in a bookstore; that became his apprenticeship, and that saved also his life, as these kind people took him in as one of their own and even brought him to Taiwan when the Communists took over.

As the years passed and he became a comfortable burgher in his own little shop with his own little imprint, his life settled down into a quiet coda like so many of his generation. He and his friends had grabbed at whatever ropes had been flung their way, counted themselves lucky, saved their pennies, and yet always gave their own little families every comfort possible. 

These were admirable folks, true salt of the earth, and their stories were heartbreaking and beautiful once they trusted you enough to open up. Before that would happen, though, clues about their former lives would seep out in the ways they dressed and spoke, and especially in the way they prepared their food.

And so, when we were hungry, my husband and I would more often than not enter a small restaurant where the cook was a Mainlander of some sort, and then revel in the mysteries of dishes that tasted of some far-flung village, some huge metropolis, or some forgotten fishing village. 

When we were really lucky, we would find an overlooked gem of a place that offered bowls of memories, steamy dishes that spoke of generations of grandmothers stretching back through the ages, and chipped sandpots filled with fish and sorrow and happiness.

Fish head sandpot

Jiangsu's fish head sandpot

Shāguō yútóu  砂鍋魚頭

Jiangsu
Serves 4

Fish head and marinade:

Half a large big-head carp head (a little over a pound in weight), scaled, cleaned, and whacked into about 6 pieces by the fishmonger

¼ cup regular soy sauce

2 tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine

Main seasonings:

6 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil

8 thin slices fresh ginger

4 green onions, trimmed and cut into 2-inch lengths

4 ounces pork belly (no skin), thinly sliced against the grain

1 large bamboo shoot, fresh (or frozen and defrosted), cut into ½-inch slices

10 black mushrooms, fresh or dried and rehydrated, stems removed, caps torn in half

1 dried chili

2½ cups unsalted chicken stock

¼ cup Shaoxing rice wine

1 tablespoon regular soy sauce

½ teaspoon rock sugar

Extra touches:

2 dried mung bean sheets (fenpi)

Boiling water as needed

Sea salt as needed

14 ounces (or so) soft bean curd

1½ pounds (more or less) pale napa cabbage

1½ cups unseasoned chicken stock

           

1. This dish can be enjoyed the same day that you cook it, but is much better the second day. Rinse the fish head under cool tap water in a colander and then pat it dry with a paper towel. Place the pieces in a medium work bowl and toss with the soy sauce and rice wine; let the fish head marinate while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Have a wok ready, as well as an 8-cup covered sandpot or casserole.

Sandpot

2. Heat a wok over high heat and then add the oil. Toss in the ginger and green onions, and stir-fry them until they are browned; scoop out the ginger and green onions, and place them on the bottom of the sandpot. Add the pork belly to the wok and stir-fry that over high heat until it too is browned all over, and then add that to the sandpot. Then, stir-fry the bamboo shoots and mushrooms over high heat until they are lightly browned before tossing them into the sandpot.

3. If oil has collected in the bottom of the sandpot, pour it back into the wok and then turn the heat down to medium-high before starting to brown the fish heads: you will need to do this in two batches. Fry the head pieces skin side first, and then when they have browned (but not before), shake the wok to loosen them before turning the pieces over and frying the other side. Add the browned pieces to the sandpot and repeat with the rest of the fish head pieces until done.

3. Add the chili pepper to the sandpot along with the 2½ cups chicken stock, ¼ cup rice wine, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, and rock sugar, bring the sandpot to a boil, and let it simmer for about half an hour. If you are serving this the next day, remove the sandpot from the heat and come to room temperature before covering and refrigerating; slowly warm it on the stove before proceeding to Step 5. If you are serving this the same day, then simmer the sandpot for another half hour before going directly to the next step.

4. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the salt while you prepare the dried mung bean sheets, bean curd, and cabbage. Cut the bean curd in half and then crosswise another 5 or 6 times to give you 10 or 12 pieces. Prepare the cabbage by cutting it in half and removing the core. Cut the leaves into 1-inch square pieces. First, simmer the bean curd in the pot of water for about 10 minutes to remove the excess liquid and to firm it up; use a Chinese spider or slotted spoon to carefully lift out the slices and place them in the sandpot. Then blanch the cabbage until it becomes slightly translucent; drain it in a colander set in the sink, and then add it to the sandpot along with the remaining stock. Shake the sandpot gently to stir, and then serve piping hot.

Tips

Not to be messed with!

Be VERY careful of two bones in this type of fish's head: these are shaped like an S and are as sharp as needles at both ends. They can be deadly if caught in the throat, as well as further down the digestive system =>  =>  =>

For this reason, serve carp heads only to adults and only to people who will eat carefully. Granted, the flavors here are very much worth the price of admission, which is caution on the part of the cook and the diners.

On the right are three of these bones from different types of carp. Pluck them out and discard them.

Refugee photo by Jack Birns, 1947, Shanghai; courtesy news/bbc.co.uk.

Fish heads, Kill Bill, and random thoughts

(From Swallow Daily)

Elle Driver: “Know what I did? I killed that miserable old fool.” [flashback with Elle hovering menacingly over the stricken Pai Mei] “How do you like the fish head, you miserable old fool?” 

- Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)

Quentin Tarantino was right on a lot of cultural points in Kill Bill, but as a Chinese food writer, the one I enjoyed the most was that part about fish heads... they would have been the perfect vehicle for assassination, because what ancient and irascible kung fu master could have resisted?

In the West, though, fish heads seem predestined for the cat or the garbage can. Few of us get the appeal of something staring back from a bubbling sandpot.

But think of it: if you braise the body of a fish, every bite pretty much has a uniform texture, with each mouthful tasting the same as the next one. Even the sauce hovers on the surface, rarely penetrating the skin and meat, while aromatics like bits of chopped ginger, fermented black beans, and fresh chili shreds settle to the bottom of the dish, invariably knocked off of their precarious perches on the slick skin, only to be noticed with regret once the last of the fish has been finished.

With a big fish head, though – and I’m talking about something that is at least a pound in size – there’s lots of acreage to deal with. It will consist of a whole maze of nooks and crannies where those seasonings can hide, places where they can burrow in the bones and skins and fins, flavoring every last morsel; plus, that is where you’ll also find the most interesting musculature on a fish.

Face it: the body of your average fish is pretty boring. Simple backbones and ribcages provide framework for little more than long strands of muscles stretching from the collar down to the tail. You don’t get “cuts” on a fish like you do with a pork butt or shank, the only obvious exceptions being the way in which a sashimi chef divvies up the body of an ICBM-sized tuna into tiny slices of red meat akami, semi-fatty chu-toro, buttery toro belly, and the half fat o-toro.

So, if you want to discover different layers of texture and flavor in a fish, the place to look is the head.

How complex is that part of the animal? Very: there may be up to 100 English words that describe the various parts of a fish head, as the complex array of bones and muscles make up the most intricate part of this animal.

But what does that have to do with eating? The answer lies in the way these pieces are put together.

Each one of these little muscles has a different texture and thickness and structure from the next, often with tiny globules of fat crammed into corners, so you not only have an array of flavors exploding on your tongue, but your mouth gets visited by things like plate-like sheets of bone wrapped with thin skin on one side, perhaps a fan-shaped muscle on the other, a tiny tidbit of gelatinous tissue hovering on a corner, and a fluctuating bouquet of aromatics.

That means that every bite is a different experience: sticky, meaty, chewy, pillowy, gooey, rough, smooth, and all the textures in-between are present. There’s a tongue in there, a pair of eyeballs, a soft brain, and tiny rows of teeth. To those with a sense of adventure combined with a curious palate, these add up to a sensuous experience, but one that requires rolled-up sleeves and lots of napkins, rather than candlelight and flowers.

One word of advice when you dive into your first fish head: aim for the area right beneath the eyes. This muscle is called “walnut meat” (hetao rou) in Chinese, and it is generally covered by a thin plate of bone. Composed of busy muscles that work the jaws, these two lumps are the prizes awarded to favored guests and pampered children as the best part of the fish.

However, if the idea of fish heads still squicks you out, I recommend that you take your first baby steps toward true Chinese foodie status by diving into the following recipe for fish collar, which is the area between the head itself and the body. This is called the chin (xiaba) in Chinese and is often inexplicably wasted by people should know better, since it contains particularly tasty morsels of meat wrapped up in largish bones.

So, instead of lopping it off next time and serving it to Fluffy, claim the collar for yourself, especially when you have a big fish like wild-caught amberjack (which is sometimes labeled as yellowtail and called hamachi in sushi bars). You then can turn it into a dish that is nothing short of insanely delicious, as in the recipe here where the skin caramelizes and becomes what can only be described as fish-scented candy. This is Shanghainese magic, a mélange of sliced fresh ginger and green onions sparking the sticky dark sauce that begs to be licked off of every last bit of bone and fin.

Enjoy this with a glass of warm rice wine, a bowl of hot steamed rice, and perhaps some greens or a simple Chinese pickle. You’ll quickly understand what all the fuss is about.

Shanghainese soy braised amberjack collar

Hùshì gānshāo húbóyú xiàbā 滬式乾燒琥珀魚下巴 

Shanghai

Serves 4 generously as an appetizer or as part of a multicourse meal

4 halves (about 2 pounds) very fresh collar from a wild-caught amberjack (aka hamachi) or other firm-fleshed yet mild large sea fish

6 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil

5 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh ginger

2 cups green onions that have been trimmed and cut into 1-inch lengths

½ cup Shaoxing rice wine, divided

6 tablespoons good regular soy sauce

4 tablespoons (or so) crushed rock, brown slab, or piloncillo sugar

1. Rinse the collars carefully under cool running water, making sure than all viscera and gills have been removed. Thoroughly scrape off all scales under running water; carefully go over the skin a couple of times with a paring knife to ensure that the skin is scale free, since the skin is delicious and those tiny scales would ruin everything. Pat the collars very dry with a paper towel so that they fry in the oil rather than steam.

2. Heat the oil in a large, flat-bottomed skillet over medium-high until a small piece of ginger immediately sizzles when added. Place the ginger and the collars (skin-side down) in the hot oil. Sear the collars on one side without moving them so that a light crust is formed. Shake the pan and flip the collars over; add the green onions and shake the pan so that they shimmy down under the fish. When the second side of the fish is golden too, add the soy sauce, sugar, and half of the rice wine. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pan, and let the fish slowly cook for about 10 minutes. Raise the heat to medium-high, and when the sauce has been reduced to a heavy syrup, gently turn the fish over and add the other half of the rice wine. Cook the sauce uncovered until it has once again has been reduced to the consistency of honey; you will be able to smell caramel as the sauce reaches its perfect state of gooiness. (The fish may be prepared ahead of time up to this point and gently reheated under the broiler in the final step.)

3. Remove from the heat and place the fish skin-side up on a lightly oiled broiler pan; scrape all of the sauce and ginger and onions onto the fish, as well. Broil the fish a few inches from the coils until the edges of the fish have caramelized and the sauce is very sticky.

Tips

Asian markets – and in particular the Korean grocery stores here in California – often have a wonderful array of fish, including varieties and cuts that Western markets often don’t offer.

If you decide to plunge in and prepare a fish head, just substitute one whole fish head for the four collar halves. Split (or have your fishmonger split) the head down the middle and remove the gills. Rinse the head, scale the skin carefully, pat it dry, and proceed as with the collar.

Check with your fishmonger to see if yellowtail heads or collars can be special ordered.

Rock sugar (as well as other solid sugars like Chinese brown slab and piloncillo) is a secret to the luxurious mouthfeel of many Chinese sauces because it melts into a silky layer that does not leave a sour aftertaste.

This dish will be recognized by Chinese cognoscenti as being from Shanghai due to the copious amounts of green onions, as well as because of the sophisticated sweet-salty sauce. Both the green onions and the ginger are every bit as delicious as the fish here, so be sure to enjoy them between bites of the fish.

Illustration copyright (c) Carolyn Phillips, 2012